ABSTRACT
Through a determined social dedication, he rose above the paralysis of private grief, the stone-stiff inactivity which was death itself. Life, he concluded, could have meaning only if it were brought into harmony wi th the "eternal process moving on," wi th the purposes of all creation evolving slowly from form to form towards "one far-off divine event." For life to Tennyson meant vital motion, the motion as of a buffeted ship sailing into the baths of all the western stars. In "The Voyage" he developed a characteristic metaphor to describe the tireless struggle of his aspiring age: life was a sea journey over troubled waters, a pilgrimage which demanded fortitude of spirit and steadfast defiance of the laws that seemed to condition man's ineluctable free w i l l :
And never sail of ours was furl'd, Nor anchor dropt at eve or morn;
We loved the glories of the world, But laws of nature were our scorn.
